A revolutionary change in the way people communicate is taking place at the moment with the rapid introduction of Voice over IP (VoIP) telephony, which enables the use of the internet for voice as well as data communications. Internet or VoIP telephony offers numerous advantages over traditional phone systems, including a wider range of features, less expensive calls, lower infrastructure costs and easy scalability.

VoIP, in technical terms, is the routing of voice conversations over the internet or any other IP-based network. It is already a proven technology and has become the immediate future of telephony: a couple of years ago, only 4% of UK business phone lines used it, but by 2008 it is estimated that nearly half of all business calls will be VoIP-based. More and more internet service providers are offering VoIP as part of their broadband packages.

Driving this rapid take-up of VoIP telephony is the promise of cheap phone calls: VoIP to VoIP calls are completely free, and links to traditional phone networks are currently around 1p per minute, including to many overseas destinations.

And yet, while everyone will certainly benefit from less expensive phone bills, what is perhaps most interesting is the way in which this new communications technology is levelling the playing field between large and small organisations as VoIP brings added value in terms of features that used to only be available with very expensive phone systems and call centre software. Because a VoIP-based phone system is completed integrated with existing computer networks, it runs as an easy-to-use and configurable software application, allowing advanced and customised communications programmes to be set up.

With a VoIP phone system, even the smallest of companies could offer such features as unlimited voicemail boxes, auto-attendants with different menu levels and functions, advanced call routing, and so on. The phone system can also be integrated with other applications such as a customer database offering users screen alerts and information for incoming calls or one-click dialling. These are the kinds of features that have always separated ‘blue chip’ operations from small organisations.

Implementing a new VoIP phone system from scratch can’t exactly be considered cheap, as the hardware, in terms of individual telephone handsets, is roughly comparable in price to traditional phone systems. Lower support and phone costs will pay off in the long run however.

Any not-for-profit organisation or social economy business considering investing in a phone system in the next little while would do well to consider the added features and business value that a VoIP system could offer.

Geoffrey Ready is managing consultant with Avec Solutions, a social economy company providing IT consultancy and support primarily to the not-for-profit sector. Many of Avec Solutions’ services are built around open source solutions, including Linux web hosting, open source content managed websites, and Asterisk voice-over-IP telephony.